So reads the headline in today’s Telegraph. It appears that the Nasty Party is savaging itself. The story is of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt subjected to “blue-on-blue” attacks, while the Prime Minister is said to be “unable to look Eurosceptic ministers in the eye”.

Brexit and the NHS

Jeremy Hunt’s wild assertions that “standards would fall, spending would be cut, there would be an exodus of medical staff” seem to be unrelated to health issues as such. Link. He assumes, wrongly, that Brexit might have a negative impact on the economy, and infers from that that there would be a negative impact on the NHS. He could make the same point about any other spending department. Welfare, pensions, education, defence. Take your pick.

Of course there will be some market volatility and histrionics over the Brexit period, and no one can predict exactly how that will play out. But the whole point of Brexit is that it will be positive for the economy over the medium to long term, and therefore (by Hunt’s own logic) it will be positive for the NHS. And all those other spending departments.

The only direct connection with health is the vague threat to the employment and immigration status of Health Service staff. But of course no one on either side of the debate is talking about deporting workers currently in the UK. We are, instead, talking about a points-based system which would ensure we get immigrants with the skills we need — including medical staff. That said, it would be better for Britain, and better for the rest of the world, if we trained enough doctors and nurses here in the UK, and became less reliant on imported skills.

Cameron can’t face Eurosceptics

Several papers accuse the Prime Minister of being “unable to look Eurosceptic ministers in the eye”, and ignoring them when he encounters them in the corridors of Westminster. Childish and mildly psychotic behaviour. I have a theory, for what it’s worth. Cameron knows that with his handling of the Referendum he’s put his job, and his legacy, at great risk. But I suspect that as the “renegotiation” and the referendum debate have evolved, he’s starting to realise that he’s made the wrong call. So eye-contact from ministers who made the right call is not merely a reproach. It’s an unwelcome reminder if the hole he’s dug for himself, and the terrors lurking there.

The hard right invades Brussels memorial events.

More evidence that the breakdown of order and democratic accountability in the EU is leaving a space for exploitation by far-right elements. Up to a thousand skin-heads reportedly hi-jacked a Brussels peace March, making Nazi salutes. As Brussels progressively degrades democratic accountability in the EU, there are some unpleasant forces waiting to occupy the vacuum.

Trump: the UK isn’t safe for Americans

Thank you Donald. He is insisting that the EU, including the UK, is no longer safe for Americans — and given the rather paranoid attitude of many Americans to security issues, I guess that will be a knock to the tourism figures. Of course in a sense he’s right. The dangers are evident. But it’s by no means clear to me that the risks to an American in Paris (say) are any greater than the risks to a Brit in the USA. Terrorist attacks, the Twin Towers, random gun crime. Risk is a two-way street, Mr. Trump.

Stephen Crabb, newly appointed Work & Pensions Secretary, has a French wife. And he says because women are practical, and his wife fears higher food prices, we should vote to remain. Powerful logic indeed. But the facts suggest that Brexit will reduce food prices. And energy prices. So let’s have the facts, Stephen, not your wife’s idle speculation.

Anna Soubry: “We can’t afford the risk of Brexit”

Anna Soubry, the left-wing Tory MP, writing in the Telegraph , warns that we can’t afford the risks of Brexit. But she has little to say about the risks of staying in an EU hell-bent on full political union, and over-run by migrants. Remember that this is the woman who told us on BBC Any Questions that Brexit would mean our exports to the EU going down to “almost absolutely zero”. Difficult to see why anyone so wholly out-of-touch with reality would get a Telegraph column in the first place.

Who the h— is Anna Soubrey? She is singing from the old hackneyed BSE song sheet, she even quotes Cleggie’s old line that has been debunked time and time again.
How did we end up with so many dimmies in Parliament. Of course its Cameron’s quota system!!!

We now have that woman – Nicki Morgan, supposedly responsible for the Education of the Nations children rambling on about Brexit. She spouts the usual rubbish handed out by the no.10 Scaremonger machine.
I find it difficult to comprehend
‘If parents and grandparents vote to leave, they’ll be voting to gamble with their children and grandchildren’s future.
She will add: ‘This is the generation of Instagram, easyJet and eBay. They don’t want to see a Britain cut off from the world, where not only their opportunities, but our influence as a country, ends at our shores.’
Mrs Morgan said: “For many young people travelling around the continent is a rite of passage before they settle down into adult life, they don’t have to worry about a myriad of visas and entry requirements.
What is this woman ratting on about, like the rest of Cameron’s dumb belles they seem to be unaware there was life before the EU, when did you last have to have a visa to travel in Europe? In my experience it must have been before 1960.
Mrs Morgan said young people “travelling on tight budgets” had benefited from the cost of flights falling 40 per cent “thanks to EU action”. Absolute rubbish, cheap air travel has been the result of the United Kingdom Independent airlines pioneering Affinity and package holidays initially. Nothing to do with the EU.

Cameron claims to have created millions of new jobs, who were they for? Young Britons or out of work Europeans.

Of course none of this has anything to do with the working of the EU and the very valid reasons for leaving the EU, just another red herring to obscure the real issues of which Morgan is ignorant